A Sunday Drive

We went for a (little) drive on Sunday.

Ok, we thought we’d go for a little drive, but in fact ended up covering 171 kilometres (106 miles), as you can see from this map of where we went.

Just down the road, not too far from where we are house sitting, a road leads off to the left. The Priory and Ansons Bay it say, but it also says, Mount William National Park.

Just before leaving to do some serious bushwalking, I found a warning online that said the access road to Mount William National Park was closed.

So with bushwalking off the agenda, we decided we’d go for a drive anyway. I wanted to take a look at Ansons Bay and then head out to Eddystone, but had no idea what we’d find went we got there.

Turning left onto a bitumen road was a blessing as most remote roads are graded dirt. The blessing didn’t last long though and it would be hours before we made it back onto a smoother roadway.

All lumps and bumps aside, the day was lovely. Ansons Bay is a fishing village with scattered houses and huts, the odd mansions or two and lots and lots of ‘liveable sheds’. There really wasn’t much to look at so we headed towards Eddystone.

I’d seen it earlier on Google Maps, but hadn’t paid that much attention to what was there. The road was rough, much rougher than the road to Ansons Bay, but as we were following a single electrical wire, we thought we’d just keep going and I’m so glad we did.

As it turns out, Eddystone Point has a beautiful lighthouse and is the most easterly point of Tasmania. It is also the very northern reach of the Bay of Fires.

We spent quite some time exploring the area. We walked down to Larc Beach and along the sand as far as we could. Offshore we could clearly see George Rocks and, in the distance behind the rocks, hill formations that I believe belong to the Furneaux Group of islands in Bass Strait.

But I’m only guessing we were close enough and that’s what we were looking at. The Furneaux Group is situated directly north of where we were, and north is where I was facing when I took the photo.

After exploring around the lighthouse, we then drove back along the road to a track where we could walk down to the beach on the south side of the point.

The sand was white, as it is on all the beaches we’ve been to within the Bay of Fires and the wind was quite fierce, making unusual structures in the sand. Not only shifting sand dunes – our foot prints had vanished by the time we walked back to the car and we were only on the beach five minutes, 10 minutes tops – but it created eerie sand structures that were the result of washed up kelp that had ‘dug in’ and the surrounding sand blown away. I’ve included a photo along with many others in the gallery below.

After leaving Eddystone behind, we then turned right to follow the road to Gladstone. But unlike the Gladstone in Queensland that most of my family and friends are familiar with, this was a tiny little hamlet with only a few homes and a General Store that doubles as a Post Office.

Before arriving at Gladstone though, we stopped by to take a look at Little Blue Lake. I hope you saw my Photo of the Week on Monday. Little Blue Lake is quite a sight to see, but sad that it is the result of mining in the area.

At Gladstone, we decided it was time to head back, but rather that turn around and follow the bumpy dirt road, we decided that we would follow the road we were on, having finally found (smoother) bitumen.

Our not so little Sunday drive didn’t result in a bushwalk, but was rewarding in so many other way.